Bank statements help

Chrosto

Hi everyone,

Myself and my partner are in the process of buying our first property. I'm a teacher and she is a nurse and we earn 24k and 28k respectively. We have rented for 5 years and are currently paying around 600pcm for our property (above average for our area). We weren't necessarily looking to get out of our current situation but I was able to sell my car recently and we added the money to savings, this gave us around 10,000 with many relatives pledging to help out if we did want to buy somewhere. As we weren't really looking to move we didn't do much research and didn't spend any time saving up any more money... and we didn't spend any time cutting back on luxuries.

We recently saw a few properties and fell in love with a house. We had previously received a DIP for well above the amount required decided to put an offer in which was accepted. We are now looking to arrange a mortgage. We will be looking to borrow 170,000 but have been advised that we could borrow more (based on no information other than our salaries, so I appreciate this has to be taken with a pinch of salt).

We both have excellent credit scores, my partner has no outstanding debt, I have a bank loan which I'm in the process of paying off. Affording the mortgage payments (even if interest rates change) and repairs wont be an issue.

My question is really about bank statements. I've researched that lenders will scrutinise outgoings and will ask questions and make judgements on affordability based on the lifestyle you lead. Up until this point we have not compromised at all on lifestyle and eat out, go to concerts and buy clothes/books/records on a regular basis. We don't save any money and spend most of our income each month because we choose to. I appreciate that ideally we should be looking to cut back for a few months before buying but we haven't done this (due to how quickly we found somewhere we wanted to buy). How likely is this to affect an application if we did apply over the next few weeks? Are lenders likely to appreciate this is how we currently choose to live and can change this or are they likely to decide we are not suitable. It wouldn't be a massive problem is we had to wait until after Christmas before looking again and can easily improve our spending habits... We just really want this particular property!

Apologies for this lengthy post. Any advice is greatly appreciated. Thanks

ACG

Lenders vary, in the main they use ONS figures. Bank statements are requested to confirm your commitments and income.

Some do go through transactions with a fine tooth comb and others may not even need bank statements.

In the main I think you will be fine.

David_White

I wouldn't stress too much as long as you're not living in an overdraft or gambling excessively.

If you go through a Broker they could place you with a lender that doesn't require bank statements if necessary.

Gunther_Golf

We were in a similar position in that we thought we would be looking to buy around Feb 2017 however thanks to family providing a gift amount to us we were able to bring our search forward. Our plan was always to reign our spending in 3-4 months before we thought we would be looking to get a mortgage however given the bung we got we didn't "have time" for this.

I don't use online gambling, never had a payday loan, have zero credit card balances etc etc however most of our monthly salaries were being spent apart from around £1,000 per month which was savings.

Provided 3 months bank statements to our broker and there was no issue with the mortgage application at all.

Good luck OP

amnblog

Stories about scrutiny of Bank Statements to fine detail make good press but we are not there yet.

They are primarily looking for :

Unexplained income or outgoings
Salary coming in
Rent going out
Returned payments
Staying within OD limits

swishy87

Please don't get yourself all panicked. I read this forum too much when we were going through the application process in the summer and scared myself to death. I was worried about everything.

We already have a mortgage, we go to the pub every Friday so our statements showed transactions in the pub each week, we sometimes went into our OD and we even sometimes went slightly into an unarranged overdraft.

Touch wood, so far, everything has been fine and we complete next Friday!

lewishardwick

I am going through the purchase process at tge moment. My mortgage is with accord, I have submitted bank statements, but have had no request for a lifestyle breakdown of spending...

AnotherJoe

swishy87 wrote: »

Please don't get yourself all panicked. I read this forum too much when we were going through the application process in the summer and scared myself to death. I was worried about everything.

We already have a mortgage, we go to the pub every Friday so our statements showed transactions in the pub each week, we sometimes went into our OD and we even sometimes went slightly into an unarranged overdraft.

Touch wood, so far, everything has been fine and we complete next Friday!

If anything, this forum is an antidote to these ridiculous scare stories. Can you point to a single post where soemone has said "mortgage bounced because I spent too much in the pub on Fridays"?

Gambling is about the only everyday expenditure thats frowned upon AFAIK.

Chrosto

Thank you for the positive and sincere response from everyone. Makes us feel a bit more relaxed about the whole thing. Good luck to those going through the process. I'll be sure to update if I get an offer!

kingstreet

AnotherJoe wrote: »

If anything, this forum is an antidote to these ridiculous scare stories. Can you point to a single post where soemone has said "mortgage bounced because I spent too much in the pub on Fridays"?

Gambling is about the only everyday expenditure thats frowned upon AFAIK.

Suggestions of eating nothing but beans on toast for the three months before a mortgage application takes me back to the media in the heady days of the run-up to MMR in April 2014.

It wasn't necessary then and it hasn't been since.

Even now, several lenders don't ask for bank statements so how would they even know of some applicants' martyrdom...?

ShivasPlace

Just out of interest, what is the best way to get bank statements to the lender / broker?

As most things are online theses days and therefore paperless, we don't get statements in the post any more. I know you can order them from your bank, but these cost £5 a sheet with Lloyds and take 5 working days to arrive.

Are in-branch copies acceptable? What about statements downloaded and printed at home? Or does this vary by lender?